The study of droplet internal circulation and its interaction with droplet deformation

The study of liquid droplet is important for applications like spray-painting, fire suppression, and spray combustion. Droplet morphology has a great impact in these applications, for example, in spray conditions, droplets of various sizes are generated from jet atomization, and the large droplets have strong deformation. The highly deformed droplets have very different characteristics compared to spherical droplets, but many studies on droplet dynamics are based on the spherical droplet assumption. To develop a more accurate modeling of liquid droplet in jet simulations, we use numerical approaches to investigate the mechanism of droplet deformation. Weber number, which measures the balance of surface tension and inertia, is a key non-dimensional group that quantifies droplet deformation. However, droplets with same Weber number do not always have an identical shape. For example, our previous work[Lin and Palmore, 2022] demonstrated that internal circulation also influences droplet shape. Therefore, a deeper understanding in droplet internal circulation is needed. In this work, we will explore a wider range of droplet parameters relevant to a wide array of applications for droplets to study the interaction between droplet internal circulation and deformation.